Thanks Id. Dr feels average recovery time is 2 weeks but everyone is different. I'll go day by day and see. Thanks for the link, was helpful to see what levels based on what areas of nodes are being removed.

Just as an additional thought...depending on how many nodes they take (in my case, they took 19) and what they have to remove to get clean surgical margins, they may have to place one or more surgical drains in the area, which will need to be emptied on a regular basis, and the output measured. The drains are pulled when the output decreases to a level dictated by your surgeon. When I had my double mastectomy and axillary dissection, I had 2 drains on the cancerous side, one on the other...my last drain took a month to taper off to the point where they were willing to pull it (and I pretty much forced the issue because I was scheduled to fly home to my family the following day). You'll likely be on oral antibiotics as long as you have the drains in. It might be worth considering all this if your conference is out of town and attending will involve extensive/overnight travel.

I just had to have an excisional biopsy of an additional suspicious node in the same area (benign, Thank God!), and I once again have a drain. I'm hopeful that this one will not take as long to taper off :-)